This invention relates to methods and materials for conducting very high efficiency chromatographic separations, i.e., adsorptive chromatography techniques characterized by both high resolution and high throughout per unit volume of chromatography matrix. More specifically, the invention relates to novel geometries for matrices useful in chromatography, particularly preparative chromatography, and to methods for conducting chromatographic separations at efficiencies heretofor unachieved.
The differences in affinities of individual solutes for a surface based on charge, hydrophobic/hydrophilic interaction, hydrogen bonding, chelation, immunochemical bonding, and combinations of these effects have been used to separate mixtures of solutes in chromatography procedures for many years. For several decades, liquid chromatography (LC) has dominated the field of analytical separation, and often has been used for laboratory scale preparative separations. Liquid chromatography involves passing a feed mixture over a packed bed of sorptive particles. Subsequent passage of solutions that modify the chemical environment at the sorbent surface results in selective elution of sorbed species. Liquid flows through these systems in the interstitial space among the particles.
The media used for liquid chromatography typically comprises soft particles having a high surface area to volume ratio. Because of their many small pores having a mean diameter on the order of a few hundred angstroms (.ANG.) or less, 95% or more of the active surface area is within the particles. Such materials have been quite successful, particularly in separation of relatively small chemical compounds such as organics, but suffer from well-recognized limits of resolution for larger molecules. Liquid chromatography materials also are characterized by operational constraints based on their geometric, chemical, and mechanical properties. For example, soft LC particles cannot be run at pressure drops exceeding about 50 psi because the porous particles are easily crushed.
Recently, high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) has become popular, particularly for analytical use. Instead of employing soft, particulate, gel-like materials having mean diameters on the order of 100 .mu.m, HPLC typically employs as media 10 to 20 .mu.m rigid porous beads made of an inorganic material such as silica or a rigid polymer such as a styrene divinylbenzene copolymer. HPLC allows somewhat faster and higher resolution separations at the expense of high column operating pressure drops.
Products emerging from the evolving biotechnology industry present new challenges for chromatography. Typically, these products are large and labile proteins having molecular weights within the range of 10.sup.4 to 10.sup.6 daltons. Such products are purified from mixtures which often contain hundreds of contaminating species including cell debris, various solutes, nutrient components, DNA, lipids, saccharides, and protein species having similar physicochemical properties. The concentration of the protein product in the harvest liquor is sometimes as low as 1 mg/l but usually is on the order of 100 mg/l. The larger proteins in particular are very fragile, and their conformation is essential to their biological function. Because of their complex structure and fragility, they must be treated with relatively low fluid shear, and preferably with only minimal and short duration contact with surfaces. The presence of proteases in the process liquor often mandates that purification be conducted as quickly as possible.
The major performance measures of chromatography techniques are productivity and peak resolution. Productivity refers to specific throughput. It is a measure of the mass of solute that can be processed per unit time per unit volume of chromatography matrix. Generally, productivity improves with increases in 1) the surface area per unit volume of the matrix, 2) the rate of solute mass transfer to the sorbent surface, 3) the rate of adsorption and desorption, and 4) the fluid flow velocity through the matrix.
Resolution is a measure of the degree of purification that a system can achieve. It is specified by the difference in affinity among solutes in the mixture to be separated and by the system's inherent tendency toward dispersion (bandspreading). The former variable is controlled by the nature of solutes in the process liquor and the chemical properties of the interactive surface of the chromatography medium. Bandspreading is controlled primarily by the geometry of the chromatography matrix and the mass transfer rates which obtain during the chromatography procedure. Resolution is improved as theoretical plate height decreases, or the number of plates increases. Plate height is an indirect measure of bandspreading relating to matrix geometric factors which influence inequities of flow, diffusion, and sorption kinetics.
It obviously is desirable to maximize productivity and to minimize bandspreading in a matrix designed for preparative chromatography. However, the design of a chromatography matrix inherently is characterized by heretofore unavoidable constraints leading to tradeoffs among objectives. For example, the requirement of a large surface area to volume ratio is critical to throughput, and practically speaking, requires the matrix to be microporous. Such microporous particulate materials are characterized by a nominal pore size which is inversely related to the surface area of the particles and a nominal particle diameter which dictates the pressure drop for a given packed column. Operations with rapid flows and small microporous particles require high operating pressures and promote bandspreading. Increasing the size of the particles decreases back pressure. Increasing the size of the pores decreases surface area and, together with increasing particle size, results in significant decreases in productivity. If rigid particles are used together with high pressures, gains in productivity can be achieved (e.g., HPLC), but plate height, the measure of bandspreading, is proportional to the flow rate of liquids through the matrix. Thus, when high surface area porous particles are used, as fluid velocity is increased, plate height increases and peak resolution decreases.
The phenomenon of bandspreading generally is described by the function: EQU H=Au.sup.1/3 +B/u+Cu (Eq. 1)
wherein A, B, and C are constants for a particular chromatography column, u is the velocity of fluid through the bed, and H is the plate height. The A term is a measure of bandspreading caused by longitudinal diffusion, i.e., a term accounting for the fact that there is a slow molecular diffusion along the axis of a column. The B term accounts for the fact that a fluid passing through a column can take many different paths. This is often related to as "eddy diffusion". The A and B terms dominate bandspreading phenomena in a given matrix at low fluid flow velocities. At high velocities, the contribution of these factors to bandspreading is minimal, and the phenomenon is dominated by the C term. This term accounts for stagnant mobile phase mass transfer, i.e., the slow rate of mass transfer into the pores of the particles of the matrix. As a solute front passes through a column at a given velocity, some solute will penetrate the pores and elute later than the front.
The degree of bandspreading traceable to the C term is related to particle diameter, solute diffusion coefficient inside the pores, pore size, and the velocity of the solute outside the pores. More specifically, the C term is governed by the expression: ##EQU1## wherein c is a constant, d is the diameter of the particle, and D.sub.eff is the effective diffusion coefficient of the solute within the pore. To maximize throughput, fluid velocity should be high. But as is apparent from the foregoing expression, increasing velocity increases mass transfer limitations due to pore diffusion and therefore leads to increased bandspreading and decreased dynamic loading capacity. Note also that bandspreading increases as a function of the square of the particle size. Thus, attempts to increase throughput at a given pressure drop by using higher liquid flow rates among the intersticies of large particles produces geometric increases in bandspreading caused by slow intraparticle diffusion.
It is also apparent from equation 2 that bandspreading can be reduced by increasing the effective diffusion constant. Of course, diffusion rate is an inverse function of the molecular weight of the solute and is dependent on concentration gradients. Thus, proteins having a high molecular weight typically have diffusion constants in the range of 10.sup.-7 to 10.sup.-8 cm.sup.2 /sec. For this reason, chromatographic separation of proteins can produce levels of bandspreading not encountered with lower molecular weight solutes. Furthermore, the effective diffusivity through the pores of the particles is lower than the diffusivity in free solution. This is because diffusion is hindered in pores having mean diameters comparable to the molecular diameter of the solute, e.g., no more than about a factor of 10 or 20 greater than the solute. Effective diffusivity differs from ideal also because the solute must diffuse into the particle from fluid passing by the particle. Increasing convective flow in what is virtually a perpendicular direction to the direction of diffusion produces an effective diffusion rate somewhat lower than the ideal.
Effective diffusivity also is decreased during loading of the surface of the sorbent with solute. This phenomenon has been explained as being due to occlusion of the entrance of the pore by adsorbed protein. As protein molecules begin to diffuse into the porous matrix, they are thought to sorb at the first sites encountered, which typically lie about the entryway of the pore. It is often the case that the dimensions of a macromolecular solute are significant relative to the diameter of the pore. Accordingly, after a few molecules have been sorbed, the entrance to the pore begins to occlude, and the passage of solute into the interior of the pore by diffusion is hindered. As a result of this occlusion phenomenon, mass transfer of solute into the interior of the sorbent particle is reduced further.
Many of the negative effects on plate height caused by stagnant mobile phase loading in porous particles may be alleviated by decreasing particle size, and therefore pore length. However, as noted above, this strategy requires operation at increased pressure drops.
Recently, it was suggested by F. E. Regnier that chromatography particles having relatively large pores may enhance performance by allowing faster diffusion of large molecules. It was thought that increasing pore size might alleviate the pore entry clogging problem and permit diffusion into the particles relatively unhindered by pore effects.
There is a different class of chromatography systems which are dominated by convective processes. This type of system comprises sorbent surfaces distributed along flow channels that run through some type of bed. The bed may be composed of non-porous particles or may be embodied as a membrane system consisting of non-porous particle aggregates, fiber mats, or solid sheets of materials defining fabricated holes. The channels of the non-porous particle systems are formed, as with the diffusion bound systems, by the interstitial space among the particles. The space between fibers forms channels in fiber mats. Channels formed by etching, laser beam cutting, or other high energy processes typically run all the way through the membrane, whereas the former type of channels are more tortuous.
In these systems, solute is carried to the sorbent surface by convective flow. Solute may be transported for relatively long distances without coming into contact with sorbent surface because Channel dimensions are often quite large (0.2 to 200 .mu.m). The flow is generally laminar, and lift forces divert solutes away from channel walls. These drawbacks to mass transfer of solute to the solid phase can be serious and present a significant obstacle to high flow rates. Thus, channels must be long to ensure that solute will not be swept through the sorbent matrix while escaping interactive contact. The provision of smaller diameter channels increases required operational pressure drops. If velocity is reduced, throughput obviously suffers. Still another disadvantage of the convective transport system is that it inherently has a relatively low surface area and accordingly less capacity than other systems of the type described above.
Elimination of the pores from a particulate sorbent can allow separations to be achieved very rapidly. For example, 2 .mu.m non-porous particle columns can separate a mixture of seven proteins in less than fifteen seconds. However, this approach cannot solve the engineering challenges presented by the requirements for purification of high molecular weight materials as dramatically demonstrated in the table set forth below.
__________________________________________________________________________ CHARACTERISTICS OF NON-POROUS PARTICLE COLUMNS __________________________________________________________________________ Particle 10 5.0 2.0 1.0 0.5 0.1 0.05 Size (.mu.m) Surface 0.6 1.0 3.1 6.3 10 63 105 Area (m.sup.2 /ml) Pressure 17 68 425 1700 6800 17000 68000 Drop (psi/cm of bed height) __________________________________________________________________________
As illustrated by these data, small particles, whether present in packed columns or membranes, have very serious pressure problems at particle sizes sufficient to provide large surface areas and large loading capacity. In contrast, 300 .ANG. pore diameter particles in the 5 to 100 .mu.m range have from 70 to 90 m.sup.2 /ml of surface area, while a 1,000 .ANG. material has an area on the order of 40 to 60 m.sup.2 /ml.
A chromatography cycle comprises four distinct phases: adsorption, wash, elution, and reequilibration. The rate limiting step in each stage is the transport of molecules between the mobile fluid and the static matrix surface. Optimum efficiency is promoted by rapid, preferably instantaneous mass transfer and high fluid turnover. During sorbent loading, with a step concentration of the protein, fewer molecules are sorbed as the velocity of mobile phase in the bed increases. The consequence is that some protein will be lost in the effluent or will have been lost as "breakthrough". If the breakthrough concentration is limited to, for example, 5% of the inlet concentration, that limit sets the maximum bed velocity which the bed will tolerate. Furthermore, increases in bed velocity decrease loading per unit surface area.
As should be apparent from the foregoing analysis, constraints considered to be fundamental have mandated tradeoffs among objectives in the design of existing chromatography materials. Chromatography matrix geometry which maximizes both productivity and resolution has eluded the art.
It is an object of this invention to provide the engineering principles underlying the design of improved chromatography materials, to provide such materials, and to provide improved chromatography methods. Another object is to provide chromatography particles and matrices, derivatizable as desired, for the practice of a new mode of chromatographic separation, named herein perfusion chromatography, characterized by the achievement at high fluid flow rates but manageable pressure drops of extraordinarily high productivities and excellent peak resolution. Another object is to provide improved methods of separating and purifying high molecular weight products of interest from complex mixtures. Another object is to overcome the deficiencies of both convection bound and diffusion bound chromatography systems. Still another object is to provide a chromatography procedure and matrix geometry wherein effective plate height is substantially constant over a significant range of high fluid flow velocities, and at still higher velocities increases only modestly.
These and other objects and features of the invention will be apparent from the drawing, description, and claims which follow.